微软首款智能手环为何如此低调

    通过免费的微软健康应用，你可以编辑微软手环的设置，而且微软手环同时支持谷歌安卓(Android)、微软Windows Phone和iOS三大操作系统。该应用还要接收（有时还要回复）手环发出的提醒。

    我发现这款应用有时非常令人不爽。有时,我的活动可以跟我的iPhone同步。但有时我打开应用时，欢迎我的却是一条错误信息。通常情况下，唯一的解决方案就是把手环和iPhone同时重启。虽然在重启中没有出现数据丢失的情况，但设备之间的通讯失联毕竟还是非常令人恼火的——在互联设备时代，它给人一种失信的感觉。

    我还发现，微软手环的屏幕大小和方向，让人在手环上阅读通知消息时感觉很费劲、很尴尬。当提醒消息出现时，由于屏幕横宽竖窄，你只能看见提醒消息的一小行文字。虽说你可以用手指往下滚动，但是滑动好几次手指才能读完一两句话，还是感觉挺傻的。一开始我设置了在微软手环上显示所有提醒，后来我意识到，在手环上看消息其实挺麻烦的，于是我干脆关掉了提醒功能。

    这个问题并不是微软手环独有的。每个做可穿戴设备的公司都想达到屏幕尺寸的最佳平衡点——太大了显笨，太小了又没法阅读文字。同时，这些公司也希望能够以最好的方式，在一个非常有限的环境中展示信息。我只能说微软目前尚未找到答案。

    微软放弃了给微软手环办一个大型发布会，同时也就避免了给人以很高的预期。事实证明，这是一个明智的决定。经过一段时间的评测，我认为微软手环介于一款合格的健身追踪器和一款平庸的智能手表之间。对于一款全新发布的产品来说——不管发布会的规模有多大，走中间路线是不会分到大蛋糕的。（财富中文网）

    译者：朴成奎

    Using the free Microsoft Health application, you can edit the Band’s settings and sync your activity to several mobile operating systems: Google’s Android, Microsoft’s Windows Phone and Apple’s iOS. The same app is required to receive (and in some instances, reply) to alerts from your wrist.

    I found the app frustrating at times. Sometimes my activity would sync to my iPhone in the background; other times I would launch the app only to be welcomed by an error message. Often the only remedy was to restart both the Band and my iPhone. Though no data is lost during a restart, the lapse of communication between devices is an irritating inconvenience–a broken promise in the era of interconnected devices.

    I also found that the size and orientation of the Band’s screen make it difficult and awkward to read notifications on your wrist. Wider than it is tall, the screen is only able to display a small line of text when an alert occurs. You can scroll through text using your finger, but it can feel silly to use multiple swipes to read what amounts to a couple of sentences. Initially I had enabled all alerts to appear on the Band; after I realized that reading messages was more trouble than it was worth, I disabled notifications altogether.

    This problem isn’t unique to the Band, of course. Every company offering a wearable device is trying to figure out the best balance of screen size—too large can be unwieldy, too small can be impossible to read—and how best to present information in a very limited environment. All I can say is that Microsoft hasn’t found the answer yet.

    By forgoing a large announcement event for the Microsoft Band, the company avoided setting high expectations. The decision proves to be a wise one. I walked away from my time with the Band categorizing it somewhere between a competent fitness tracker and a mediocre smart watch. For a newly launched product—no matter the size of a welcome party—being in limbo just isn’t going to cut the fat.